Leaving the aborted tunnel behind, we
now continued on toward the east. My small 'music box' received a
consultation from time to time; here, we found more of those dust
mounds. Two more of those 'good' Tosser pistols showed, as well as a
blackened 'poke-knife' of a type that Sarah recognized from a
tapestry. She said it wasn't a fetish – Rachel had picked up one
like it on the trip south, and had written about it on that one
tapestry she'd bathed for – and while it wasn't quite
as good as a Vrijlaand blade, it had proved itself a decent knife on
the rest of the trip, according to Sarah.

“Most likely one
made by the people who made this stuff, then,” I murmured, as I
continued on. There were other areas needing exploring in this room,
and while the dust mounds were numerous enough – several of them
had 'regular' tosser pistols, these also in pristine condition; they
were picked up and pocketed just the same – my chief concern was to
attempt to find a 'map'. More, I hoped I could find more of those
'decent' knives.

“The workers
stole some of them, and the witches nearly all of the
rest,” said the soft voice. “That box of knives has nothing but
'sawdust' in it now – or so it looks. There are a few
more of those knives still hiding in it.”

“Meaning I'll
need to finish up that batch before we leave,” I thought, “or
failing that, bring them to a usable condition.” They were close
enough to that state now to need perhaps three hours to make
them 'usable', and then Hans could 'dose' their wooden portions with
some of his wood-treatment 'oil'.

“I would do that
and take what decent knives you find here,” said the soft
voice. “You will wish spares, as those people across the
sea can really use decent knives and those over them disarmed
them 'far long years ago', as they speak of the time of the war.”
A pause, then, “Given a few samples, they can make more in some
quantity readily.”

“And these
things will serve?” I asked. “They look a little like those I'm
finishing up.”

“Those
you're working on will be coveted, and you'll have people there and
elsewhere wanting to 'look them over',” said the soft voice, “and
they'll try to make those.” A pause, then, “that design
lends itself poorly to their current means of production, unlike
those you've been finding – even if they can manage a much better
steel than what those you've found so far have.”

“Do they have
poor metal?” asked Sarah.

“Compared to the
usual here?” said the soft voice. “Not even close
to what's common in the five kingdoms, even if what Dennis is working
on is significantly better for edge-holding and toughness.” A
pause, then, “most witches would fight over such blades, even if
they're not as large as those they like.”

“Slip one of
those into a thin leather holster stitched to the inside of your
riding boot,” I muttered. “Reach down as if to look in your boot
for 'hiding' firebugs, then lunge upward with such a knife and get
your adversary in the chest before he realizes anything is
happening.”

“Exactly, even
if most witches would not think to do as you said,” said the
soft voice. “They would, however, use such a knife for much of
their 'surprise' work – and if you have enough spares, I'd
give one each to Lukas and Gilbertus. Both men could use such
a 'hideout dagger', and they'd do just as you suggested with their
riding boots – which will create something of a market for such
knives.” A pause, then, “expect regular orders for such
daggers if you do that, however – and that one shoemaker will
become even more busy than he currently is, so much so that
he'll try to get some fourth kingdom machinery up here so as to keep
up with the increased demand.”

“He will have trouble getting it, so
such orders will go to the shop instead,” said Katje. “We'll
need to turn a bit left shortly, lest we run into one of these stacks
of things they have here.” A brief pause, then in a screechy
voice, “I have never seen so much Kuchen dough gone bad in my
life!”

I turned, and shining my light, I saw
what Katje was pointing at. An 'untouched' head-high stack of
plastic-wrapped light-gray explosive stood but feet from the two of
us, and I gasped at the knowledge of just what we had here. I said a
silent prayer of thanks to God for providing for us, as if anything,
we had sufficient to fight a not-so-small war here.

“Enough to get started on
fighting such a war, you mean,”
said the soft voice. “You'll want a lot
more equipment, much better
equipment, easier-to-use
equipment, and a great many items that currently do not exist even in
your mind – and that
merely to deal with that witch to the north. By the time the place
is where it belongs in
time and space... You will not
recognize it, and that's so even if you resort to what is called
'science fiction' where you come from.”

The wall to our
left began minutes later to first slope southward at an angle, then
formed a wall that forced us to move right. Here, there was a narrow
aisle, then at the end of this odd 'projection', another narrower
aisle turned to the left once more. I wished to follow it, but the
narrowness of this aisle made for single-file walking; and in my
case, I nearly had to go sideways, it was so narrow.

It made for a
fervent downward looking for trip-wires, and I was disappointed when
I did not find a single example. This situation was all-but
made for trapping, so much so that when we passed through the
narrow gap, I was astonished to find conjoined mounds of 'witch-dust'
laying everywhere upon the floor. It was hard to walk without
disturbing the mounds of the stuff, in fact.

“What happened?”
asked Sarah. She was looking for a path through the dust. There was
a narrow way right next to the wall – provided one faced the wall
and walked sideways with great care. Otherwise, the only thing I
could think of was to go into the maze of packing crates or whatever
was on the shipping platforms, and then somehow return to our path –
and I knew that way wasn't a good idea.

“That one witch
trapped that place you just went through, and caught an entire party
of thieving witches with a collection of 'medium-sized' delayed
action curse-activated bombs,” said the soft voice. “If you look
carefully, you can see chips in the wall made by his 'shot'.”

I went to the
wall, lantern close to my chest, and began walking sideways as I had
thought to do. The number of small chipped places was frightening,
so much so that I asked, “what did that wretch use – that
pelleted wolfram stuff?”

“A smaller
granulation than he used in his curse-mines, but otherwise, yes,”
said the soft voice. “More, this 'shot' was specially-coated with
layered chemicals and highly cursed, so it killed in mere seconds
even if a single pellet grazed one of his victims.” A
pause, then, “he had this area so covered that those witches
dropped in place when his bombs exploded, and he then removed what
they were trying to carry off and put it in his
pile – which is in hiding, and ahead of you.”

“It is, though
it's lost much of its cursed aspect,” said the soft voice. “Most
of that 'shot' is in these dust-mounds, so if you step around
them you'll be safe enough.”

“Specially-coated?”
I asked. I wondered if this was like those evil bullets put up by
Madame Curoue.

“Similar
concept, much greater lethality, and vastly quicker 'knock-down',”
said the soft voice. “Madame Curoue was trying to recreate that
particular poison when her laboratory lost containment and
self-destructed while she was working in there – and the 'breach'
alarm no longer worked, even if most of the other equipment was in
surprisingly good shape.” A pause, then, “no warning whatsoever:
just a huge and hot flash-fire and finally a subterranean eruption
that buried the whole mess under many yards of fine gravel
mingled with a mixture of special surface-coated salts.”

“Gravel mingled
with s-salt? Salts?” I asked. I wondered just what she had
used, in fact.

“One of the
Mistress of the North's innovations,” said the soft voice. “She'd
seen what escaping drugs could do in this area when it was
still heavily populated, and hence she researched what it would take
to prevent such 'escapes' should containment be breached.” A
pause, then, “what she did worked, even though it was
centuries old, which was why there wasn't a severe 'plague' in the
second kingdom.”

Walking around
these mounded dust-piles was not the easiest thing, even if I
could see places to put my feet; and I thought to carry Katje so she
would not be in danger of accidently stepping on one of the
jagged-edged tungsten-matrix pellets. While they had indeed lost
much of their potency over the centuries, the fact that 'cursed
tungsten' was still a fairly nasty poison if touched was no
joke, and therefore I picked her up and lightly walked around the
worst of the mounds before setting her down. When I did so, she
asked why.

“Your shoes,
dear,” I said. “Remember how they need replacement? You
do not want to walk in that area, as there's enough of that
gritty stuff laying about that you might step on a pellet – and
those things will cut your feet.”

“Then you had best carry Maarten,
also,” said Katje, “as his shoes need rags in them to cover the
holes now.”

I then saw that Sarah had organized
matters such that Karl and Sepp – both of whom now had
trekking boots – were carrying Maarten, while Sarah was scouting a
path for them. She led around the mounds, but as she did, she was
muttering about how she was now glad for full-hobnail boots of
such thick soles. I imagined Karl was learning about knitted
stockings, as his boots were obviously new.

“There's much of that gritty stuff
on this floor,” said Sarah. “That stinky witch was a thorough
wretch with his bombs, and no mistake.”

“I wonder just what he used?” I
thought.

“Those he made up from scratch, more
or less,” said the soft voice. “He got his 'tungsten' from the
green area, where a lot of such metal was actually processed from its
pre-concentrated ore.”

“Was this a pure ore, or a mixture
of metals?”

“Mostly tungsten, but there was iron
and several other metals found in the most-common species of ore with
it,” said the soft voice. “Properly treated and 'cleaned up'
thoroughly, it made a very good material for inserted tools like you
used to have.”

“C-carbide?” I asked.

“A type of it, yes,” said the soft
voice. “The green-area shops mixed the raw washed-and-concentrated
ore with graphite and some fluoride compounds, then used electrolysis
under high heat to remove most
of the more troublesome impurities and combine the carbon with the
tungsten while reducing the other oxides to their metals. The
resulting friable powder was then pressed in molds of the correct
size and shape, and then baked at high temperatures in a reducing
atmosphere. The resulting 'inserts' were then roughly ground to
size, and the powder made from wet-grinding them went into the next
batch to be so 'cooked' – which made for better inserts, as a
rule.”

“Did they work?”
I asked.

“Yes, but they
tended to be both unusually inclined toward wear and somewhat brittle
compared to what you're familiar with,” said the soft voice. “They
did quite a bit better overseas given the raw material – or 'shot'
like that witch used, which is a part-compressed and low-sintered
'crude' tungsten-iron-cobalt alloy.” A pause, then, “that was
the usual form sold to other countries and the large hot-zone firms
that made 'real' inserts, as it reduced bulk and overall weight and
simplified further processing.”

The two blocks to
the right were behind us now, and turning right showed a wider aisle
to our front, as well as two lines of chain-connected poles. These
led to a black hole blocked by stereotypical 'barroom' doors, these
things hung such that they could flap like the wings of a dead bat.

A
dead bat, this hung by its hind legs, was the symbol of a
particularly potent species of strong drink; and the witches
consuming the stuff desired it greatly. It was not cheap –
but then again, no fetish was.

To reach those
doors, however, one had to traverse a hallway, this narrow with an
arched roof pocked with more of those elongated thermos- style bulbs,
and to each side, faintly rustling 'advertisements' stood
shoulder-to-shoulder and head-high.

One such
advertisement showed the 'power' of a tire-burning Draštic
Dödge as it 'launched'; all four rear tires were billowing thick
gray smoke, while the driver was sawing on the wheel crazily to keep
it pointed straight – while another...

No,
all save that one twelve inch high glossy and colorful picture of an
insanely powerful vehicle – all save one of these face-high
pictures were advertisements showing bottles of high-octane drink;
and in each bottom left corner, I saw what looked like a dead bat,
the wings shaped like those of a dead fly and the tongue sticking out
as if to show the animal's final act of revulsion toward what it had
been 'pickled' with.

“I
think this to be the entrance to a drink-house,” said Sarah as she
came beside me. I was at one of the doors, and about to push it
open. “They print little of note in the fifth kingdom house, but
they do print this type of rubbish.” Sarah was pointing at the
'advertisements'.

“D-dead...
What is that thing?” I asked, as I pointed to the dead
'bat'.

“Those
like that are no longer present,” said Sarah, “but they were
common in this area then. A supposed test of strong drink then was
to drown such an animal in a pot of such drink, and if the animal
died with its tongue out like that, the stuff that killed it was
thought by the witches to be worth drinking.” A pause, then, “that
sounds more like it was a fit poison, if it killed animals by dipping
them in it.”

“D-do
they still put pictures of those things..?”

“Yes,
they do,” said Sarah. “Usually such a bottle decorated in that
fashion contains what those mining town thugs call whiskey.” A
pause, then, “the very worst type I have heard of is called
Red Eye.”

“F-forty
chain?” I asked. I then recalled what that stuff really was –
namely, Veldter drain opener.

“If
it has a dead flying-animal on the bottle, I think it is worse than
what the Veldters make, or those bad copies of that stuff sold in the
fifth kingdom,” said Sarah. “I know it smells worse, as
I've seen those thugs drink that stuff and forty-chain.”

I
began to push on one of the doors, this gently with my
lantern-holding hand while reaching for my pistol's holster and
quietly unbuttoning it. There was a faint rustle of dry ancient
hinges, then – I was afraid of meeting a just-woken 'bone-mass'
come to find more drink so that it might sleep for another thousand
years – I pressed upon the door further and stepped into the room.
The door stayed open, and soft steps followed me inside. One of
those making such steps then spoke as I 'surveyed' the surprisingly
large room.

“And
if they get one of your stills for rubbing Geneva, they will need to
name that especially bad strong drink she spoke of differently,”
said Katje. “Now I am glad for this pistol, as I can smell
thugs in here.”

“How?”
I asked – until I sniffed a second later. “You're right, though.
It smells like a drink-house filled with black-dressed thugs,
and...” I looked about the room once more, this time concentrating
on its contents rather than where a bone-mass – or some other
kind of superannuated thug – might be hiding himself.

Mounded
dust usurped the area around a number of stools, while suits of black
clothing, this gone to shreds, lay among these mounds of dust; and
those pistols Sarah had named 'Tossers' seemed omnipresent. A touch
with the 'test file' to the first one I found showed this
weapon to be a 'user' and not a 'Tosser'; and as I slowly moved about
the room, on average one pistol out of three I tested proved to be a
'user'. Meanwhile, the others began to look around in this now
'small' and 'close-seeming room' – it seemed to have shrunken
somehow with more than one person in it – and when Karl spluttered
loudly, I looked up from testing a pistol. He'd found something,
though what it was seemed an entire mystery until he'd gotten it
loose from where it had been hidden behind this one 'dais' in the
corner – or perhaps 'bar' would be a better label for this
multi-angled plank supported by cheap-looking wooden 'panels'.

The
pistol I had been looking at proved a 'user', as did the next one I
tested, this second pistol being all but touching the one previous.
The ratio of 'users' to 'Tossers' was steadily climbing as I went
across the room, and I was wondering where to put all of these
'user-grade pistols'. At this rate, we would have enough
'users' for the five to be going overseas twice over, and one each
for Hans and Anna.

“Now
this is a brigand's weapon,” said Karl, as he came closer. I then
looked up, and was stunned, so much so that I nearly dropped that
second 'user' pistol on the table nearest me. I needed to clear the
weapon before wrapping it in a rag so Sepp could tie it with string
and 'bag' it – and where he had gotten the pair of bags, the
bundles of rags, and the brown-toned ball of string was a
near-complete mystery.

Karl
was not merely wearing a long brown fabric chest-crossing 'belt'
filled with those 'tinned' all-brass shotgun shells, but he'd
found a wood-stocked shotgun that looked to have 'shortened' barrels
compared to the two we had found earlier. The weapon looked deadly
indeed.

“A
brigand's weapon?” I murmured. “Short barrels like that?”

“I
have heard of them using these things,” said Karl ominously, “and
both Lukas and Gilbertus told me that, so I think it is likely.” A
pause, then, “neither of those two spoke about this way of keeping
the ammunition to hand, though, so I think this gun and its belt is
something a brigand would wish.”

“I
am not sure about brigands, Karl,” said Sarah, “but I am
sure about Anna, if those shells are loaded with common-sized
shot.”

“How,
dear?” I asked. I wanted to ask Karl where he'd found that gun, as
I had a suspicion he'd missed a real prize – either due to him not
looking terribly well, or his being so enamored by what he had found
right off that he'd needed to show someone.

“Because
she will fight him so as to have that gun for rats, and she'd wear
that belt just like he has so as to shoot them at them when they
start showing,” said Sarah. “I have seen her when that house has
rats in it, and I'd almost name her ready to live for a season in a
rest house, she gets so irritated.”

“What?”
I asked.

“She's
been after a short musket or fowling piece for shooting those things
for ever so long,” said Sarah, “and that one there looks very
likely, or I do not know her at all.”

“And
if that ammunition has, uh, stiff shot in it..?” I asked. I
wondered.

My
wondering, however, segued into intense interest, and I went to where
Karl had laid both belt and gun, this being on the angled 'table' of
the 'bar' in the corner directly opposite the entrance. An
examination of one of the shells showed it to be indeed as the others
were outwardly, but as I looked at it again with the lantern close
by, the brass casing went a trifle gauzy to show what the thing was
actually loaded with.

“Oh,
my,” I gasped. “These things are not loaded with common
shot, either for size or much else.”

“What
do they have, then?” asked Sepp. “Those things loaded stiff?”

“I
th-think so,” I muttered. “Our Heinrich mould might make
larger shot, but this stuff is not small.”

“How
large is it, then?” asked Sarah.

“Nearly
fifteen lines,” I squeaked.

“Actually
it's closer to sixteen lines, which was the common size
witches loaded shells for use while 'hunting' sacrifices and on the
battlefield,” said the soft voice, “and what's hidden where Karl
found that gun is a secret compartment that has not merely more
of those shells, but also two 'user' pistols and a tin of ammunition
for those weapons.”

“Anna
using this thing on rats?” I gasped. I could just see
cabinets blown to wide-scattered kindling, furniture torn to rags and
wood-fragments, and walls turned into blood-marked 'sieves' in places
and ragged-shaped 'rat-holes' in other locations – those being
where she'd gotten close to the rat in question and had blown
the animal to atoms. “With these loads?”

While
there was no answer to my burning questions, I could just feel the
'so?' aspect among the others, at least until I joined Sarah in
searching behind the angled – or, perhaps, curved – 'bar' in the
corner of the room. The two meeting walls behind this chest-high
'plank' – these showing cracked and age-hazed mirrors behind
head-tall shelves made of hand-wide boards – had once held bottles
of drink; but the bar itself had its secrets, specifically that
'secret compartment' mentioned. It needed me finding first where it
was located, and then opening it with my key. It opened easily,
which did not surprise me – unlike what it contained, which did.

“This
thing is crammed full!” I spluttered. “It's full of shells for
that gun, and what looks like a really strange grenade here,
and a sizable knife...”

“Best
put all that stuff on this drink-house plank here,” said
Sepp. “This is a drink-house, or it was one once, and it was full
of black-dressed thugs long ago, as I found the rust to one of those
long triangular daggers witches like.”

“The
rust?” I asked, as I began laying more 'ammunition belts' up
on the 'counter' of the 'bar'. There were three full examples
so far, and more of those things yet inside the 'secret compartment'
– which was nearly the size of a small refrigerator or
'common-sized' safe where I came from.

“It
was by itself next to the dust of a witch, and that reddish dust was
rust all right, as I got a chip of a lodestone out of this leather
pouch I have and tested it,” said Sepp. “It had the right shape
and all, so I knew it was a dagger of some kind, and it was three
fingers longer than my foot, so it was fit for a witch.”

I
mumbled something about taking that evidence dagger on the trip and
Sepp supplied a rejoinder.

“That
thing might get a rise out of those blue-suited stinkers over there,
but I'd be careful with it otherwise,” he said. “That thing's
almost too nice to use, unlike those knives this place is said to
have.”

“Said
to have?” asked Sarah. “Did you hear this, or did you
find a map to this place?” A muttered 'something' on
Sarah's part as she moved a stack of three hefty square tins of size
to the top of the 'bar', then, “that place out there looks just
like the inside of an Alley, only they're not nearly that neat
for what they have in them, at least for the ones I've been
inside of.”

Sarah
then let out a screech when I found one of those shorter weapons, or
what I thought to be one until I'd gotten the thing on top of the
'plank'. I then saw that not merely had its metal portions had
somehow become severely rusted, but it had wooden
furniture 'slimed' with a species of 'dipped' varnish, this replete
with 'runs'. It did not look good for either its wood or
its metal – and that in the places that weren't rusted or
'worm-eaten'.

“What
is that thing?” I asked.

“A
shop-made domestic copy of those shorter weapons,” said the soft
voice. “The 'tender' had it made in the green area, and instead of
using the ammunition to the ones here, he used a larger pistol round
that was both commonly-found in this area and domestically produced.”

“C-common?”
I asked.

“He
had his share of trouble getting what's in those tins,” said the
soft voice, “as those cartridges came from the same batch as those
used by the Mistress of the North in her weapons like that.”

“Oh,
no,” I squeaked. “The stuff is cursed?”

“Actually,
no,” said the soft voice, “unless you call 'moderately
corrosive priming' a curse.” A pause, then, “unlike the weapons
made overseas and in most of the other countries on the continent,
almost all ammunition made in this area had 'corrosive'
primers, which meant one either needed to clean one's weapon
thoroughly and frequently – or know the correct
curses and chant them often so as to prevent rust.” A pause, then,
“it started rusting hours after that 'tender' died, hence that
weapon you just found is fit for first dipping in distillate prior to
dismantling it and then documenting its pieces – and then tossing
those pieces in Frankie, with the wood pieces going for kindling and
the metallic ones as part of a charge of metal.”

“Those
shells to that shotgun?” I asked.

“Used
the primers and the other materials that had been made overseas,”
said the soft voice. “The common 'death camp shotgun' shell had a
slightly larger diameter, noticeable taper to its brass case, a
thicker-yet rim, about an inch more of length, and was
'corrosive-primed', but the pellets used in those rounds were
readily available in the green area – and the 'tender', along with
a large number of other witches, had gotten sacks of shot there
prior to coming here.”

“That
big stuff?” I asked. I meant what was in the shells themselves –
and so far, every belt I had looked at had at least three or
four shells loaded with what amounted to 'buckshot'. It made for
more wondering as to just how much damage Anna would do
to the house were she to use that weapon on rats with such loads.
The other shells – who knew? That shot was still big enough
to tear things up.

“Was
a common product, as it sold well,” said the soft voice. “Smaller
shot, however, was both much more common and a good bit
cheaper, as it was used locally for 'pest control' using locally-made
weapons similar to what Karl found for size.” A pause, then, “some
of that shot was smuggled over the border, as it sold well
there, and then some of that 'pest-control' ammunition was diverted
for 'hunting' using 'undocumented' weapons.”

“Hunting?”
asked Sarah. She was handing up a 'shiny-looking' cloth bag from the
cache, which while dark green in color, was obviously not
something a witch would desire. It was a bit too well-made to be
'fit' as a fetish, and I suspected the 'tender' had looted it from
somewhere out among the hundreds of stacks outside 'his' room.

It
looked altogether suitable for a larger woman's purse, at least for
its size, and it took straps as well. I wondered briefly if Sarah
wished a purse, even if 'leather' – especially close-scraped
deer-leather – suited her much better.

Done
right, deer-leather had a buttery-soft feel to it, much like
Sarah's skin; and both felt good to the touch.

“Yes,
for 'wild food',” said the soft voice. “While those people had
'enough' to eat, their diet tended toward both the unpalatable
and the monotonous, and while it lacked little for 'energy
food', it often lacked certain kinds of needed proteins
– and hence certain metabolic ailments were quite common unless
frequently supplemented with animal protein of one kind or
another.”

A
pause, then, “every machine-shop that had the needed equipment
therefore made parts for guns – and some of those parts were
'traded' for essential supplies, due to the near-total lack of
'money' in the various green areas.” A pause, then, “you can
imagine the results, given the near-ubiquity of such parts and the
need to routinely work on the weapons of witches.”

“They
made some for themselves,” I muttered. I could see portions
of the rear of the compartment now, and the 'bar' was piled high with
'loot', so much so that much of it I had not had a chance to
'inventory' adequately. I had so far found no less than four
'common' grenades, all of them still their 'as-issued' mottled green
and slightly greasy to the touch; several magazines for that
rusted-solid weapon, all of them loaded with cartridges of a size
midway between that of a Tosser pistol's and that of a hand-howitzer
for bore and longer than either cartridge for length, bundled lengths
of soft braided dark-colored rope, another of those 'usable' daggers,
a larger brass-hilted 'Bowie' knife that was more rust than all else,
and finally two more of those cloth bags, these having the straps
still present. I suspected one of them had the strap missing to the
first such bag found. I was still heavily involved in this inventory
and finally checking over the inside of the 'bar' when the soft voice
'turned aside' my mind with its comments.

“And
hid them well, also,” said the soft voice. “If one person in a
green-area village was found with an undocumented weapon, the
usual was to sacrifice every person and animal present in the
entire region, and burn the place to the ground afterward as a
warning to other 'Undermen' – which is a rough translation of the
black book's name for those currently called 'commons' in witch-run
territories.”

“Undocumented?”
I asked. I had resumed looking behind the bar, but thus far, the
'bar' seemed to be cleaned out. It needed another going-over, but I
wasn't certain we'd have time today. Sarah had somehow found
that one missing strap, and now all that we had found went in the
three cloth bags – at least until they were seemingly filled.
Sarah supplied two more of those cloth satchels, these from her bag,
and the remainder went in those. I could tell there was room left
over in every bag just the same.

“All
weapons owned by non-witches were centrallyregistered,
locked up when not actively in use, and needed checking out for use
and then checking back in, much as if they were library books – and
one needed a reason good enough to satisfy the local 'procurator' to
check one out. Usually that meant not merely some kind of 'bribe'
but also swarming vermin 'interfering' with that witch in one fashion
or another, that being usually procuring his food or producing his
drink.”

“If
they had no money, then how could they bribe such a witch?” asked
Katje. She had come to help Sarah and I, and as I finished my
portion, I resumed checking pistols. There weren't that many
dust-piles left.

“By
giving that witch things of value to himself and his fellows,” I
said as I found a 'Tosser' and put it on the stool next to where I
found it after clearing it and putting the magazine with the cleared
round back on the table. “That, and I think some of those people
made strong drink for the local witch-trade.”

“Precisely,
and jugs of strong drink were both the usual bribe-currency and
the reason used to secure weapons and ammunition,” said the soft
voice. “The usual spiel was along the lines of 'if you want your
drink regularly and in quantity, then we need to be
able to harvest the grain so as to make it for you, and if
those animals eat all of it, then we cannot make your drink'.”
A pause, then, “even a 'double-drunk' witch of that time could see
that kind of logic, especially when his superiors were back in
the hot zone and he was more or less by himself out in the
hinterlands serving at his own expense in hopes of getting higher in
the power structure one day.”

“And
the only drugs available to that stinky wretch were those he brought
out to his post with him,” I muttered. I had but a few more
pistols to find and then test in this room, and the routine was now
this: 'user-grade pistols' left on the tables for Sepp to wrap and
bag; 'Tossers' on the stools – we would get those later –
and all of the magazines left on the tables as well.
Invariably, those were full or nearly so, regardless of the
nature of the pistol itself. One wished to have a number of
loaded magazines present for each pistol for rapid reloads in a
'tight' situation, like when being swarmed by blue-suited thugs.

“Actually,
that depended on where such a witch was posted,” said the soft
voice. “The most-prized drugs, yes – as they were made in one
particular district located in this general region, and getting them
readily needed money and 'pull'. Lesser drugs of a 'cruder nature' –
those could be had fairly readily in the 'frontier zones' of the
outlying districts if one was an up-and-coming witch and had the
needed funds, as the 'commons' neither made nor consumed drugs.”

“Those
would interfere with their work, wouldn't they?” I said.

“No,
not just 'witch-drugs',” said the soft voice. “All drugs,
no matter how innocuous or commonplace-seeming – and there was
nothing of an over-the-counter nature made whatsoever.” A
pause, then, “all drugs were forbidden to that
place's 'commons', even ineffectual 'home-remedies', and the
punishment for violation of that rule was death on the spot by
the very same witch that discovered the offender.”

“How
did they live, then?” asked Sarah. She was still packing the bags,
mostly now with the magazines I'd removed from the 'Tosser' pistols.
Katje was not merely helping her gather the magazines, both from
where I'd laid them and some few on the floor, but looking around
carefully. I was glad she was looking, as I could
trust her to not scream about 'fetishes' unless there actually was
one present – and retain a measure of mindfulness then.
She'd proved that with the rags she'd tied to that one tripwire.

“Mostly
the way people currently live in the first kingdom,” said the soft
voice. “A few died of work-related injuries, a lot of them
died violent deaths at the hands of hunting witches, and nearly as
many died of illnesses that could have been readily treated in
the neighboring countries.” A pause, then, “and if a witch found
a sick person in that time and place, that witch did sacrifice on the
spot while naming that individual both 'an enemy of the state' and
'Disgraced' – and often, the others of that household were killed
as well so as to slake the witch's desire for revenge upon the
person who had to shirked his slave-duty by his daring to choose to
become ill and those daring to shelter that rebellious fool
rather than reporting his illness immediately upon its
detection.”

“There,
that's the last of these things,” I said, as I cleared a
'user-grade' pistol – which was indeed the last weapon of its type
in this room. A few more remained, these being 'Tossers'. I
needed their magazines just the same. “How many of these things
did we find so far?”

“I've
bagged nine with this last one,” said Sepp, “and I'm about due
for another bag. This one is full.”

I
made a quick count, then murmured, “eleven, with this one here
making twelve. Just right for what I thought we'd find – and
better than two magazines per weapon so far, unless my guess is off.”

“Yes,
in here,” said the soft voice. “There are more
'user-grade' pistols lying scattered about upon the floor and on
benches elsewhere in this general area – and that on top of those
remaining in their boxes out on the main floor.”

“Then
how many pistols do we have?” said Sepp.

“Remember
those that were picked up before coming in this room?” asked the
soft voice. “There's another 'batch' of dust-piles not thirty feet
from the outer door of this place, and then three more smaller mounds
between there and where you started – and each of those
mound-collections has at least one 'user-grade' pistol.” A
pause, then, “and carrying at least one spare 'user-grade'
pistol for each of you is a very wise idea overseas.”

“Why
is that?” asked Maarten.

“Because
drawing a full-loaded pistol with a chambered round and flipping off
the safety is faster than reloading a 'dry' one,” said the soft
voice. “Granted, not much faster if you practice a lot,
but when you're being swarmed by blue-suited club-waving
functionaries who are 'as dumb as bricks', those 'half-seconds' can
really count.”

“Almost
want to use a sword then,” I muttered.

The
silence that descended was broken seconds later by Sarah's soft grunt
of fatigue. “There. I stuffed each of these bags we found in that
hiding spot, and I have wished many times I could get fabric like
this for sewing.”

“Uh,
why?” I asked.

“It
feels good to the touch,” said Sarah, “and I think it is very
sturdy and long-wearing, and then this stuff has the tightest weave I
have ever seen, so it will hold stitches well.”

“It
would make a most-uncomfortable shirt, dear,” said the soft
voice. “That cloth is used for such bags for a very good
reason, and in fact it was developed for such use.” A brief pause,
then, “you do not want to wear a waterproof shirt, do you?
You would become death-chilled in winter and 'boiled' in summer,
unlike with the linen you have commonly used.”

“And
that other lighter-weight fabric we've found is better for
rain-clothing anyway,” I said. “That stuff in those bags is
closer to that of a mail-sack.”

“Not
quite,” said the soft voice. “You can tear a mail-sack,
if you work at it hard enough.” A pause, then, “you cannot
tear that fabric.”

“Then
we will wish much of it,” said Sarah, “as it sounds perfect for
packs and satchels.”

“Something
a good deal lighter would work well for those, dear,” said the soft
voice. “Remember this saying: 'worry about the ounces when you're
traipsing, and let the pounds concern themselves'.”

“That's
right,” I squawked. I had once said something similar, save I had
spoken of grams rather than ounces, and the task in question was not
backpacking while 'hunting' – which was pretty close to what
most 'military work' would actually be here – but rather an
amateur-built rocket that needed to go on a severe diet so as
to increase its mass fraction, that being the ratio of fuel-weight to
the weight of the entire rocket.

That
was not easy to do in a rocket of that size, and the seeming
'obtuseness' of those socially-adept leading people to this
and other matters – like 'make your mistakes early, while they're
still cheap enough to not weep overmuch' and 'we will need to
do these things to a much greater degree of mechanical precision,
especially once these things start going higher and faster' – was
difficult for me to comprehend. It was utterly obvious to me what
needed to happen over time so as to meet their stated goals,
unlike the 'corporate gamesmanship' and 'image management' that went
on constantly in that environment.

With
a final examination of the room – another of those 'good' knives
turned up in a corner, where it had been tossed by one of the dying
witches, and I found two more Tosser pistols, these tossed by dying
witches – we left the drink-house, and turned to the left once past
the chain-linked poles. Here again the aisle was wide, but I was
becoming aware of just where that one expert witch had hidden
his personal hoard; and not thirty feet later, I saw a black
hole showing to our left. The width of this 'alcove' was initially
astonishingly narrow, and when I went inside it slowly, it seemed
that I had once again entered another world, for here, there
were shelves lined with sundry supplies of one kind or
another, and a sizable 'mound' hiding deep in the darkness that lay
some distance beyond them. The whole region warranted investigation,
and that thoroughly, but the chief matter now was verifying
just what we had present – or at least get some idea of what
we had – and then making certain there were no 'surprises' left
behind us to cause trouble.

“There
are no 'surprises', as this is the 'lair' of that one expert witch,”
said the soft voice, “and he personally collected up most of
the 'user-grade' Tosser pistols,” said the soft voice. “They're
in here, along with several machine pistols, two of those rifles like
the one you tried this morning, and his own personal machine pistol,
which is similar to the one that tender had.” A brief pause, then,
“unlike that piece of scrap-metal, this one was better-made to
start with, then substantially improved on-site, very
well-cared for, and was 'greased' after each thorough cleaning
– a cleaning which he did daily whether he used the piece or not.”

“Meaning
it's usable, but mostly as a source of ideas,” I muttered. “That
ammunition is probably cursed, and...”

“No,
his isn't,” said the soft voice. “His cases take
the 'common' primers here, as he machined them himself so as to take
those – as he knew enough about 'combat' that finding time to clean
one's weapons 'on the instant' after a single discharge was difficult
at best, and often one was too fatigued to either chant those
'don't-rust' curses constantly or clean every piece of equipment used
with painstaking care. Hence he converted all of his stuff to
use non-corrosive primers, and reloaded his own ammunition using
non-cursed components exclusively.”

“Why,
if he was a strong witch?” asked Sarah.

“Mostly
because he knew a fair amount about the 'treacherous' nature of
curses,” said the soft voice. “It's a lot easier to watch
your back with those things when you don't have enemies trying
to plant their knives there.”

“Duh,”
I thought at the obviousness of the matter. “Only use cursed stuff
when it's greatly to your advantage or when you absolutely must.”

“Most
witches – including a great many witches a good deal stronger than
he was – never learned what came to you just now,” said
the soft voice, “and they paid the price for that lack of
thinking sooner or later – and it was usually 'a lot sooner'
once that war started.”

I
then recalled something as I began looking for the pistols that had
been mentioned, and asked, “on the instant?” I was fairly
'warm' to where those weapons were now, and getting 'warmer' fast.
They were rag-wrapped – the rags lightly 'greased', and tied with
that dark string – and then 'racked' neatly in some of those
wood-composition bins looted from somewhere out on the main floor.

“They
did not use a priming composition like that used in thimbles, but
something much worse for rusting, at least in terms of how
fast they started it,” said the soft voice. “Not even 'bad'
fifth kingdom thimbles with far too much chlorate cause rust that
quickly.”

“Why
did they use the stuff, then?” asked Katje.

“Most
likely because it, uh, kept well,” I said. “They needed
to stockpile ammunition in large quantities in and around this area,
so they wanted ammunition that would go bang when the trigger
was pulled, not 'click', 'pop' or 'boom' – and it wasn't merely the
primers that were 'bad' that way. It was everything in that
ammunition that had to be done a certain way so as to go bang
consistently when kept longer than a year or two – unless, of
course, it was cursed stuff and the witches using it knew the correct
chant or chants to 'make it behave'.”

“Precisely,”
said the soft voice. “That was one of the main reasons the country
across the sea lived so readily with such bright muzzle flash beyond
their propellants working so well – their formulas were very
stable over the long term, their ammunition was absolutely dependable
over a long period when made correctly and stored
appropriately, and it did not rust weapons unless the weapons in
question were severely neglected for a very long time.”
A pause, then, “the one drawback they had beyond that severe
muzzle flash was the tendency – at least during the time prior to
the war and during the war's earliest days – to deposit fouling in
the action.”

“Meaning
their powder left much soot,” said Sarah.

“Not
quite,” said the soft voice. “First, that fouling is not 'soot',
and then, it's nowhere near as hard to clean up as 'soot'
commonly is – and given a halfway-suitable lubricant and periodic
cleaning, its presence had little impact on most weapons.”
A pause, then, “you have nearly the best lubricant to be had
at this time, so if you clean what you use as best you can
between 'incidents' and use those rags with that blue oil in them for
wiping the parts during your 'quick-cleaning' episodes, you'll have
no trouble with fouling-related 'malfunctions' whatsoever.”

I
had now 'found' the 'user-grade' pistols, and the sight of three full
'bins' of the things had me squeaking like a just-mashed rat. I
began counting their slightly greasy rag-wrapped forms, and knew by
the time I got midway through the second 'bin' that this find
more than tripled the number of 'user-grade' pistols we had
found thus far. While this wasn't a lot of those weapons, it
was enough to issue a pair to each greens-wearing guard, two
each for Hans and Anna, several each to Hendrik and Maria,
equip the party with three or more each, and still have
a number of spares in reserve.

“And
below, we have bags of his specifically-modified parts,” I
muttered, “which he changed out of those things to... What?
Improve their reliability?”

“Exactly,
and all those pistols there in those bins have had those particular
parts already changed out, so I'd use those for the trip and
change the parts out of those other 'users' you've found when you
return.” A pause, then, “those in those bins just need wiping
down on the outside with a rag dipped in boiled distillate, then
dismantling and wiping down with those rags dipped in that blue oil –
and if you are worried about those parts being cursed, that aspect
wore off long ago.” A pause, then, “if you take some
samples of those 'upgraded' parts with you, they can be readily
duplicated overseas.”

However,
as I searched for the other weapons mentioned, I found more of
those knives spoken of as being 'stolen' – our expert witch was not
merely a military expert, but something of an expert thief –
his personal weapons, these being a machine pistol that was a close
copy of what we'd found earlier today save for its larger ammunition,
several of the regular type, a trio of 'good' knives, some braided
wire pieces with ball-shaped handles that I recognized instantly as
to their purpose even if I could not recall their names, and then
some things I had no idea of either their purpose or prior existence.

“Those
were a lot more reliable,” I thought regarding the 'common-grade'
machine pistols, “even if witches were more likely to ignore being
shot by them.”

“Not
quite,” said the soft voice. “The domestic-production
propellants weren't nearly as efficient as those made elsewhere, and
that green-area-produced weapon may have been a good copy
physically of those other weapons, but its materials were nowhere
near as strong and wear-resistant originally, which is why that witch
reworked every possible part of them he could.” A pause.
“Hence, the chamber pressure was considerably lower with
concomitant lower velocities, and that meant both a larger case and
a larger and heavier bullet to get a similar level of stopping
power at all save the very closest ranges.” A pause, then, “the
ones he found in this room had a decisive edge when it came to
range – so he had those also.”

“Also
had a limited number of rounds for 'his' weapon,” I muttered.

“Enough
to fill all four of his magazines three times over,” said the soft
voice, “but compared to that of the others, you're right – which
is another reason why he had those weapons also.”

“The
very closest ranges?” I asked.

“Most
gun-battles between witches were matters of 'surprise' and then
blazing away amid the fumes of strong drink and growing clouds of
powder smoke,” said the soft voice, “which meant 'ten paces' was
considered a 'far' distance.” A pause, then, “that
wall-of-hot-lead approach worked passably when the flames of burning
propellants actually marked your targets with scorch-marks, as you
surmised – and a lot of witch-to-witch gunfights were such
that that situation actually happened.”

“Mining
town thugs are much the same, oft-times,” said Sarah. “The usual
distance is five to seven paces, unless one or both of those thugs is
using a musket.”

“He
got Sam Brumm close like that,” said Karl. “That witch was not
expecting to get shot from someone laying on the floor with a cocked
musket, or at least I think that is likely.”

“He'd
be expecting everyone in that place to be either scared out of their
minds and not moving at all, or everyone there would be running like
frightened deer,” said Katje. “He might not have let on about it
much, but many of his victims were shot by him getting close and then
shooting them in the back.”

“Which
is one reason why he was so feared,” I murmured. “No rules save
his inclination of the moment, unlike what most mining town thugs
speak of.” A pause, then, “then again, they speak one
thing and do another.”

“I
have seen them do similar things,” said Sarah. “They only face
each other down in the streets when neither thug can catch the other
out.”

As
I first 'inventoried' our finds here and passed out those weapons we
wished – the witch's 'own' weapon, its magazines, its sizable bag
of spare parts, and its ammunition-store was marked with a rag for
later pickup 'some time in the future', while the common weapons were
removed to the front of the alcove for later pickup today –
I could tell the big finds in this place were either out among
the stacks or in one of the other two alcoves, these latter found
between our current location and the doorway we came in.

The
bird had become silent, as was appropriate for darkness that seemed
as if it were night; and I knew that meant no troubling fumes.
Such birds rarely 'died in their sleep' when gaseous poisons were
involved; they invariably woke up and squawked at least a few
seconds, for some reason. Failing that, the bird would have been
lying on the floor of its cage, not still setting head-under-wing on
its perch.

That
gave me the needed impetus to go beyond the shelves, and here,
the alcove seemed again another world, one that made for a
tinge of fear as the light from my lantern seemed swallowed up by
'utter-night' – that being a term used long in the past to describe
such darkness. This continued, both the failing light of my lantern
and the slow increase of fear – until my feet brushed against the
shreds of a rag that I instantly recognized as being a long-aged
precursor of full-quill black-cloth. I held my lantern higher, and
in its now feeble-seeming light I saw vaguely an object of
unusual shape some few feet further on, and just beyond it, the
rough-carved stone of the alcove's rear wall.

I
had found the fume-dispenser, this in the center of that
expert witch's 'sanctum sanctorum'.

I
thought to adjust my lantern, and moving the bead down slightly gave
but a tiny increase in light. My eyes had adjusted to the
darkness, however, and as I came closer to the centerpiece of
attention, I began to notice other details about where I actually
was. I looked upward, turning as I did so, and saw a pole with rings
that could slide. The rings held small tattered shreds of fabric,
this also especially cursed, which the witch had used to hide his
greatest secrets.

And
now, all of those were so much rust and ruin, unlike the centerpiece
that remained intact, that being the thing that made the place dark
and deadly until the last few days.

I
softly whispered a prayer as I turned back toward the gas projector
and took slow and tenuous steps toward it, and something – vague,
tenuous, something that was seemingly too afraid to do much other
than try to hide itself by creating a wall of blackness about it –
fled away, and my lantern suddenly blazed forth as if enraged. In
its now-glaring white light, I saw the gas projector clearly
by means unknowable, and as I turned around, I once more saw not
merely the pole and its rings, but now those rings had an intact
cloth hanging from them, its black folds marked up with
vertical-running rune-curses painted in raging red slashing
brush-strokes.

And
about me, all around me in walls of softly-rustling black, I saw the
clothing and gear of a genuine true-witch, one who was
initiated in the deep-hole years prior and had gone many steps
further on down his hell-sent path, one who killed as per his
inclination of the moment and did more or less as he felt inclined to
those he reckoned beneath him – and plotted to murder many of those
over him. The centerpiece, however, was now hidden from me, this
with a cloth of scarlet covered with black-brown crusted rune-curses.

Rune-curses
writ in innocent blood, so as to have the most power possible. This
indeed was the act of a real true-witch, one born in a
district of the chief city and raised from birth to be a witch, as
was appropriate for one from that especial district.

Those
people thought themselves snobbishly superior to other witches, and
in his case, it wasn't merely a matter of thinking to be better; it
was also a matter of proving that superiority, this done by
the means of multiple levels of initiation and hundreds of
murders, killings done as a matter of 'prowess-demonstration' and as
sacrifices to Brimstone. I then noticed more.

I
could feel a vast number of witches overhead, every one
of these chill-seeming people evil beyond my comprehension; but the
witch in question rode herd upon them, for he had the ear and more of
the chief arch-witch who ruled here; yet more still, he had say over
this entire realm, this deepest place filled with the
implements of war; and here, he had set a multitude of traps so as to
guard his things, as was proper for a true-witch born and bred
in a singular place that named itself 'the home of the real
witches'.

What
lay before me, however, was not an ordinary trap, but one of a
chosen few that had come into the place in pieces amid secrecy both
physical and 'curse-powered'. Many of its parts were specially made
by the owner of this 'kingdom'; and while he was not here right now –
he had much business elsewhere on the premises and other
places that lay nearby – his specially hand-picked guards watched
over all of this place all of the daytime and doubly so at 'night'.

I
could faintly hear these people 'singing', this in a language
so ugly and horrible to hear that I nearly fainted. But one thing
remained to me, and I stepped forward, my lantern held high, and I
gently pulled off the covering off of the witch's crowning
achievement.

What
lay before me, I now understood implicitly, both as to what it did,
and also how it worked. While little of the device itself was
cursed with real strength, the part that controlled it was
indeed cursed; and that portion, unlike the rest of the faintly
red-glowing thing, absolutely blazed with a flaming red-violet
hazing that nearly obscured it entirely. I knelt down so as to look
at that portion closer, and understood more as I began to see a
series of rapid-strobing pictures in my mind. The effect resembled a
somewhat jerky slow-motion 'movie'.

When
the curse-trigger activated – it looked like a strange 'valve',
this with a long cylindrical portion with a 'pull-ring' on the bottom
and a rune-marked can topped with a truncated brass cone on top –
the entire carefully-balanced assembly would rock back under the
force of the spurting liquid as it launched its deadly streaming
contents high into the air...

The
scene changed to what it had been before my light had gone from
barely burning to 'fiercely blazing' with such suddenness that the
only thing I heard was “where did he go now?”

“Right
here, dear,” I said. “Something happened, and I saw this thing
the way it was originally.”

The
thought-train of before, however interrupted, remained close upon my
mind; and it continued, with both sound and 'movie' once more playing
out what had happened as the air again grew chill and frightful about
me by some inexplicable means.

The
'erupting' projector launched its deadly contents high into the air
in an arching stream, and the falling fume-trailing droplets
blanketed half of the witches that were inside with
still-evaporating droplets of the 'gas' that belched out of its
conical 'barrel'.

Those
witches so 'struck' dropped within the blink of an eye to thrash for
a few seconds as their familiar spirits finally realized their hosts
were actually and truly dead, for a droplet of this particular
material upon unprotected skin killed almost instantly.

It
took somewhat longer if one merely was contacted by the fumes,
and longer yet if one left the area post-haste and avoided such
contact entirely.

Those
people still died within a minute's time, hence the two who
were 'leaving' managed to close the door and then reach the bottom of
the six-spin spiral staircase before they dropped and began
thrashing. Unlike the bodies of those killed in the room,
this thrashing was initially that of a nervous system 'going crazy'
before actually shutting down; their droves of spirits fled them
before they died, leaving them to die cold, miserable, alone,
and utterly and completely abandoned by everything they prized as
they lay dying – and then, crushed into powder by the merciless
fist of God, they were thrown down into Hell to land with
eternally-echoing thuds upon the wide charcoal-covered stone of
Brimstone's dinner plate so as to join their new-arrived comrades in
evil.

Learning
this made for comments on my part.

“It
killed more by curses than by chemistry,” I blurted.

“Precisely,
and you will encounter things like it in the future, so you
need to see this device and look at it closely,” said the soft
voice. “I would not 'send it off' just yet, though, as it will
give you ideas about how to deal with those people to the
north and some other places as well.”

“F-fumigate
them?” I asked. There was no answer, at least in the form I
expected.

However,
the device lay before me still, and with a lantern that now worked
'better than usually' and no further hiding present, I could look at
the thing better. All I recalled was entirely present, even that odd
pull-ring on the bottom of the curse-valve; and the gas canister
itself – plump, shorter than usual, with a narrowed area where it
connected to a short length of pipe leading to the curse-valve –
reminded me more than a little of a squat Geneva jug minus the usual
long and 'graceful' handle.

The
short pipe and 'funnel' was as I recalled when I looked at the other
side of the curse-valve. This 'center of attention' made for
thoughts of strange and peculiar nature, which I kept inaudible. To
speak in the presence of this device might get me in trouble,
and not from the cursed aspect of the gas projector.

I
might get in trouble from those who remained some distance to my
rear.

“No,
just use an array of sensitive heat-sensors augmented with
short-range radar,” I thought. “No curses involved then. Then,
use a smaller cylinder than this weak thing, and finally use a
mobile gas-cart so as to deliver the fumes to where they can
cause the most trouble.”

I
then screeched, “what?” There was no answer beyond the obvious,
and I kept the former thoughts in memory. I needed such insights for
the future – and that, I knew implicitly.

Further
looking: save for the valve itself, this device did not use
curses, and more, again save for that infernal curse-valve, the
device was not built like a fetish. I was surprised greatly
that part didn't burn red like it once did, but as I looked closer at
the valve itself – I wasn't about to actually touch it at this time
– I suspected that I could learn some of its secrets.

What
remained of them, anyway.

I
could learn some of its secrets by taking it apart. Because
it was triggered by a curse, it would be much of a mystery, beyond
the following: how they managed to achieve a good gas seal prior to
activation, one proof against both a 'substantial' amount of pressure
and an agent both corrosive as acid and of unreal toxicity.

That
information could be used. I knew that much. I then learned why the
thing was no longer 'burning' with curse-heat: its spirits, once
bound to it by curses and blood, were gone. I turned to go, and
began walking, my lantern now fading back to a normal level of light
for what I was using, and as I walked, I heard some answers.

“That's
because most of the valve's cursed aspect faded over the years and
the rest left completely when that deep-hole went,” said the soft
voice. “It's safe enough now, even if this place still
had fumes strong enough to cause serious illness until you
told that gas upstairs to go to its component atoms.” A pause,
then, “it got the remnants of all the fumes in the place,
not just those you 'saw' then.”

I
came back among the others amid silence, and without a word, I
resumed looking at the shelves once more. There were no questions,
at least until Sarah 'finally' got up enough nerve to speak.

“What
is that thing back there?”

“A
gas projector that was once really cursed and filled with some
nasty gas,” I said softly. “Its curses are more or less
gone, and it has some secrets that we can use later to deal
with those northern people.”

“How
far back does this tunnel go?” asked Katje.

“I'm
not really sure, as going into the place, it seemed to be playing
games with distance,” I said, “and coming out, I did not pay
attention to the distance, as I had my mind upon other matters.” A
pause, then, “I was worried that you might think me a witch when I
came out, in fact.”

“You
were gone for long enough for me to count to ten, if I did it
slowly,” said Sarah. “Did you learn something important?”

“More
than you or he realizes,” said the soft voice. “He
learned enough that it will help you all in the months to
come.”

I
finished the 'inventory' a few minutes later, with my handing out the
things we wanted 'in short order' to the others so as to stack
them against the nearest wall outside of the alcove. I had found
enough that I truly wondered if we could haul all of what we would
find today of use home, and more, how we would get it to the buggies.

“Use
those carts we found to haul it to the doorway, then take the pieces
of those knocked-down carts up the stairs and assemble them there,”
I thought, as I led the way out of the alcove and into the main area.

“You
will wish to leave some of those smaller carts down here as well as
all of the big ones,” said the soft voice. “They'll be needed
in here until the place is either utterly cleared out or that
stairway is converted into an elevator of some sort.”

“Can
that be done?” I asked. I knew we didn't have the needed
equipment, even if I could tell such spiraling staircases were best
replaced by elevators. Twisting downward upon cut-stone stairs
in a left-hand spiral had its own fetish-type behavior, according to
the beliefs of many; and without a lot of education, few
indeed would be those willing to travel up and down such a 'stairwell
to hell'. That was so apart from its disorienting aspect – which
was not a joke, as it had affected me that way.

And
yet, as I thought this, I knew replacing it could be done
'sometime in the future', and more, we would do so – as this
room was a genuinely good place to store perishable
supplies. More importantly, we might well wish to make several more
such rooms when and where we could in the deep reaches of the Abbey,
as we'd be making a lot of things that wished cold dry
environments for storage both short-term and long.

“And
then the stone from such excavations will prove itself most
useful,” I thought. I suspected some, at least, would be
limestone – and that was needed for both metal-refining and
concrete manufacture.

“That
especially,” said the soft voice, “even if the start of such
tunneling is some months away and during a period when things will be
very different at the Abbey compared to how they are now.”
A pause, then, “there's a page in Hendrik's 'book of plans' that
shows that planned addition having several such rooms as this
one, and all of them are significantly larger for size – and
they will be run over an icy underground river, just like this
one was.”

“And
now we find more ash-mounds,” I murmured, as I began to kneel down
so as to pick up a machine pistol and what I knew to be a user-grade
pistol by sight alone. “Best deal with them first, and put
the stuff we find next to the nearest cleared walls for easy
pick-up.”

The
distance from that one alcove we had just left and the entrance was
easily ninety heart-in-mouth feet with a chest-high lantern held
close and a watchful eye present looking at the floor within the
lantern's cone of best-adjusted light, and over that distance, I and
the others located another three widely diffused clumps of
ash-mounds. More, nearly every one of these people had been
carrying some kind of a weapon when they been dropped by whatever
killed them, and I counted several instances of black-striped gray
rags among the black-cloth tatters mingled with the 'ashes' of
bodies.

As
I removed the third 'user' pistol I had found since looking at this
batch of ash-mounds and cleared the weapon after removing the
magazine, I looked closer at the ash-mound where I had found it. It
made for a sudden blurting of shocked surprise.

“This
one here's got this one odd satchel, and... What?”

“One
of those rocket-holding vests, minus its rockets,” said the soft
voice. “They worked well for holding a lot of things for
ready use, not merely rockets – which is why they were so coveted
by the witches.”

“Lot
of things?” I asked.

“Magazines
to witch-rifles, especially,” said the soft voice. “That
fool-witch thought he could trade it easily to one of those few
witches who still had such weapons.”

“Why
have we not found those things?” asked Sarah – who meant the
'witch-rifles'. “Did they all go to rust?”

“Some
did, but most of the remaining examples were taken by Cardosso's
people when they looted the place,” said the soft voice.
“They're 'in the grease' somewhere underground in the second
kingdom at this time, though they've been moved repeatedly since they
were originally packaged up hundreds of years ago.”

“And
no witch today understands what they are or what to do with them,”
I murmured.

“If
you speak of those witches who live today in the five kingdoms,
you're almost entirely right,” said the soft voice. “There
are a few witches in the five kingdoms who know what
they are and how to use them, and that's because they're originally
from the Valley.”

“Do
the Veldters have those..?”

“They
may have started with some of those weapons as examples many
years ago, but they've improved them a great deal since that time,”
said the soft voice. “The current Veldter weapons are far more
durable, more reliable, are more accurate, have smaller bores, and
have much greater effective range – and more, they stand up to
harsh conditions very well, which is one aspect of those
weapons that was 'good' before they started working on them.”
A pause, then, “fed non-corrosive clean-burning ammunition,
lubricated properly, and cleaned regularly, that type of Veldter
weapon performs admirably – so much so that every fifth
kingdom thug worthy of the name wishes he could get his hands on
one.”

“C-clean-burning?”
I asked.

“One
area where current Veldter powder chemistry is only barely
exceeded by that of where you are going shortly,” said the soft
voice. “The recent-production Veldter propellants have a decisive
edge in the area of flash – they have some near-flashless
propellants that still perform 'well' – so much so that some
'people' purchase their
materials for their own use and consider the lessened velocity and
shorter shelf-life of the ammunition an acceptable price.” A
pause, then, “that 'shelf-life' is measured in decades,
not hundreds of years as with the current propellants made there.
It's not what it used to be, however.”

“Some
people?” I asked.

“You'll
learn about them shortly,” said the soft voice, “and when
you do actually encounter those individuals, you'll be ready
for them.”

As
I found the first 'lumps' of the last grouping of ash-mounds – they
started about thirty feet from the door's threshold, and ended but
ten or twelve feet away from it – I finally found a workable
routine for 'Tosser-type' pistols: hand the 'users' to Sepp, the
'Tossers' to Maarten, and the magazines, knives, and the handful of
other weapons to Katje, Karl, and Sarah. All of these weapons were
to be piled in orderly fashion next to the nearest 'clear' wall that
could be seen so as to pick them up later.

As
I finished with the last mound and cleared the last weapon – a
machine-pistol, this full-loaded and with the safety off, I thought,
“and now, I can go search out those two alcoves.”

“I'd
hurry if I were you, as Katje and Sarah have their hands full keeping
the others out of those places.” A pause as I sped up into the
fastest walk I could manage in the Stygian darkness, then as I saw
the nearest entrance upon exiting the 'pile-collection', Sarah said,
“they want to get in here bad, so there's something troublesome
inside.”

“Do
you know what it is?” I asked.

“No,
but this is too much like the behavior of a bad fetish to suit me,”
said Sarah.

“Mostly
because of their beliefs,” said Katje, as she led Maarten by the
hand over to where the rest of us were now standing. “Maarten
wanted to go into that place and start looking at those shelves, but
I told him that was most unwise.”

“Especially
as we do not know what is in there, and I might
understand what I find,” I murmured. “I found that stinker,
though, and it's safe enough now.”

“What
are you going to do with it?” asked Sepp. “Ask that it become
full again and go stink up some witches?”

“Not
at this time,” said Katje calmly. “That device may yet have its
secrets, but it should be possible to readily duplicate the important
portions – and I suspect that when it is time, there will be
suitable fillings to be had for our copies of that thing,
which we can then deliver to the inner halls of Norden so as to cause
those people trouble.” Katje sounded as if she knew
both of their need for trouble, and also possibly what kind
of trouble they needed. I wondered if she'd had any
foul-smelling dreams of that swarming-with-tinned-thugs place.

“What?”
said Karl. He sounded like he'd gone deaf or something.

“Just
what she said,” said Sarah, “though sneaking into that place will
be trouble, as none of us look a bit like those people, and while
they all sleep some of the time, they have few enough beds
that they sleep in them turn-about.”

“Meaning
finding times when that place doesn't have numbers of wakeful and
active tinned thugs in it is hard indeed,” I muttered.

“Yes,
at this time,” said the soft voice. “Wait until those
people get access to those witch-drugs, and then there will be
periods of omnipresent somnolence in Norden. Granted, infrequent
periods, but they all will sleep then.”

“Infrequent periods?” I asked.

“One of the effects of those
drugs, at least in many 'supplicants' and new-minted witches, is that
it makes them inclined toward and 'able' to do 'witch-hours, and
witch-days',” said the soft voice, “and then, such use causes
'Fashion' or 'Kultur' to become very
important – so much so that every person in a given group who isn't
'exactly like everyone else, and that in all possible ways' is
wrong.” The unsaid
part was 'you can guess what happens then'.
I understood it implicitly, as that had been the rule
for my life – both here and
where I came from.

“Summary
execution, or at least the desire to do that by those who 'fit in',”
I muttered.

“That
especially, though they name it 'sacrifice' here and 'dealing with
nonconformity' where you came from,” said the soft voice. “The
goals are identical, even if the means of achieving them are usually
not; and here there is little hiding of such desires
and the resulting killings, unlike where you came from.”

I then led into
the 'narrow' alcove, and here, I was truly stunned for the first time
since coming down here. To each side of this tall-ceilinged narrow
hallway, shelves went from floor to ceiling, these the width of my
arm and spaced but a foot apart, with those wood-fiber boxes stacked
in them tightly.

This
continued for a surprising distance, easily twelve feet or more on
the right and further yet on the left, and as the right wall fell
away, I found a metal tube stair-step 'arrangement', this on rollers
with five wide steps and assembled of bolted-together riveted
subassemblies. I tried moving the solid-looking contraption and
found that it moved readily, though its grating noise spoke of solid
metal rollers and possibly dry bearings.

“That's for
getting to those top shelves,” I muttered, as I bent down to oil
the rollers with my vial of motor oil. “One here, and this other
here...” I was glad for 'open' bearings, even if that meant an
'easy' ingress of dirt along with the oil. Given frequent dosing
with a thin species of grease, a near-dust-and-dirt-free environment,
and periodic dunking in a species of solvent, 'open' bearings of this
type looked to work 'well enough' for this job.

“Better than you
might expect, given that the usual lubricant used was a thicker
grease,” said the soft voice. “That oil will work until
you can get something suitable in the near future.”

“Red-paste?” I
asked.

“Firstly, you
have a limited supply of that material,” said the soft
voice, “at least for now. Secondly, do you have
enough time now to spend 'hours' lubricating something you're
only going to use for a few minutes today?”

The point, at
least to me, was obvious. Greasing the thing now wasn't
needed. Getting it to not be irritating to use for a few minutes was
– and in the past, 'laborers fit for such work' were
commonplace 'items' in here. Hence 'daily greasing' during the off
hours down here made a lot more sense than it did at the present.

“And of course,
we have dried-out grease causing much of the grating noise,” I
murmured.

“That's due to
metal wheels rubbing against a stone floor more than anything,”
said the soft voice, “even if softening up that dried grease will
make proper greasing a few weeks from now quicker and easier.”
A pause, then, “don't be surprised if those wheels are 'changed
out' instead of greased, though.”

“Changed out?”
I asked.

“As in replaced
with others of recent manufacture,” said the soft voice.
“That type of 'stair' is not particularly rare across the sea, and
hence they make wheels similar to those in some numbers – and
there's been a lot of improvement since those there were made,
even if the rest of the thing hasn't needed to change terribly much.”

With that,
however, I knew another matter: time was truly of the essence
now. I needed to quickly find those things we needed
to use in the next ten days to two weeks in this alcove while noting
as a general matter what was in here, then moving on to the next such
location; then finally, we needed to find those things out in the
main area we were likely to need for the same time-period. I almost
wanted to make a list, but failing a map...

“Is there
one of those?” I asked as I finished oiling the 'stairs'. A brief
moving showed it a good deal less gritty-feeling and noticeably
quieter.

“Yes, but you'll
need to find one of the still-extant copies,” said the soft voice.
“There is one in here, and not just for the main floor area.
There are maps for these two alcoves also.”

“Then we want
those as well,” said Sarah. “Do you know where they are?”

This last was said
plaintively, almost as if the speaker was fatigued beyond measure,
and when I turned to see Sarah sucking down some obvious honey, I
knew another issue beyond the previously-stated need for haste.

We could only go
another hour or two before needing to eat, and we hadn't brought any
food down, unless I missed my guess.

“You did
miss your guess this time,” said the soft voice. “Those not as
burdened as you were took either a jug of beer or a bread-bag with
the solid leftovers of your last meal, so you have sufficient food
for some few hours.” A pause, then, “I would not waste
time just the same.”

Accordingly, I
moved further into the more-open area of the alcove, still seeing
shelves on my left, until I found a pristine and nearly-dust-free
workbench topped with a clear and limpidly glossy black paint.
Lifting the just-adjusted lantern above my head showed more shelves,
these as tall as those shelves before, deeper by twice, and each
shelf-bay substantially taller and packed with more rag-wrapped
assemblies and wood-substitute boxes; and as I began to circle about
this room, I wondered where a 'map-manual' might be hiding. After
noticing the rest of the room seemed taken up with a low workbench
backed by a species of 'cork' attached to the wall, I felt inclined
to look at the drawers in the workbench; and opened them, one after
another.

“Plenty of
tools, and no maps so far,” I muttered, as I closed one drawer
after another. The tools, while not as good as some I had seen here
thus far, looked easily the equal of 'cleaned-up fifth kingdom tools'
for appearances and as hard as my 'better' ones – before I had gone
over them – by the file-test, which meant they could be used
readily, at least for a time. Such was my initial thinking,
at least before handling them much.

“No, not quite,”
I muttered upon second thought. I'd handled enough of these tools to
now know the truth. “Those things really need some
time with my files, followed by a lengthy time in a cooking can and
then, uh, drawing back to an oil-smoking temperature followed by
blacking.”

“True,” said
the soft voice. “Those are mostly 'less-good' green-area tools,
and doing as you proposed would help them tremendously.”

“They aren't as
good as full-polish wrenches?” I asked.

“Cleaner metal,
much better metal, a species of 'overall' heat-treating, and a
fairly shallow yet 'hard' type of surface-hardening that was
relatively quick and easy to do using the equipment available to
their makers,” said the soft voice. “Like the metal used in
'Tosser' pistols, it will really respond well to that
heat-treating formula that I spoke of, and after heat-treating, a
thorough cleaning, and then blacking, you'll actually have 'decent'
tools.” A pause, then, “and I would clean these tools up here
as much as you can, as the equipment present in the Abbey's shop will
not only give a better result for much of what needs doing, but also
a much faster one.”

“If this
place in here has tools, then what was it called?” asked Sarah.
She was looking in the drawers on the other side of the bench, with
Katje holding two lanterns for lighting.

“It would be
called 'the armory',” said the soft voice, “and while that one
expert witch lived, he did much of his hand-work in here.”
A pause, then, “he chanted at those tools enough to make them
'behave', which is why they worked passably for him.”

“They are
cursed?” shrieked Sarah.

“No, but he was
a lot more impaired than he thought he was, and when a witch
is that 'messed up', his hands commonly 'have minds of their
own' in regards to clumsiness – hence his near-constant chanting at
the tools when laying off the drink and drugs to a substantial degree
would have helped him a lot more.”

“Like my hands
sometimes get if I've not had enough rest and am really tired, dear,”
I murmured. “I get so irritated then that there's nothing to do
beyond pack everything up and get a nap.”

“He'd just get
more drugs or drink,” said the soft voice. “Many current witches
like to think they can go entirely without sleep or rest, but the
witches of this area prior to that war actually got fairly close at
least some of the time – which is where the phrase
'witch-hours, and witch-days' actually came from, at least according
to the larger black books.” The instant I heard that I knew
the truth was actually otherwise.

“It means
something entirely different, and comes from an earlier-yet time,”
I muttered, as I finished the last drawer on my side. That map or
maps, at least of this region, were still hiding.

“Exactly,”
said the soft voice. “Recall those infernal 'Calenders'? In the
time before the flood here, that phrase meant what those
things then did, and since that time its meaning has been both
warped and grossly diluted.”

“Days that
didn't end for most of a week's time, and the witches...” I left
off in my speaking, for now I began to feel on the underside
of the workbench. There was something hidden here, and when I knelt
down to look, lantern held just below eye-level, I nearly screeched
with delight.

“No less than
three black fabric pouches,” I thought, as I slipped one them out
of its riveted-to-the- underside sheet metal 'holder'. “These
things look a bit like some document pouches I used to have, in
fact.”

“They are
document pouches,” said the soft voice, “and they're exactly what
you've been looking for – even if some stuff isn't where it's
supposed to be, and they all go into enough detail that it'll take
you several minutes to find what you're after in here.”

“Because of what
they are written in?” asked Sarah.

“No, they were
not written in a witch-language,” said the soft voice. “The
descriptions of what is in those piles outside, as well as what is in
most of these boxes and bins, was written by a trio of especially
literate workers who had previously worked as itinerant scribes.
That was the chief reason for their drafting to this location,
in fact.”

“They had decent
jobs for where they worked?” I asked.

“Much more than
merely 'decent',” said the soft voice. “Unlike the vast majority
of non-witches, the 'better' scribes actually had consistent access
to real money – and more, they had sufficient amounts of it,
at least up until the last few days prior to the start of the war,
that they could get their hands on a fair amount of the better grades
of green-area equipment, access to health care actually worth
bothering with, and decent food – both decent for quantity
and nutrition. Most importantly, they needed all of those
things to do their jobs, hence they received far less
interference than you might think.”

“What?”
squawked Sarah.

“One of the many
things that never made it onto a tapestry,” said the soft
voice. “A lot of witches were worse for writing than many
people are today, and while most workers were worse yet for speech
and were invariably totally unable to read or write, there were some
exceptions – and those people did a lot of business,
business that commonly paid 'well'.” A pause, then, “being an
accomplished and capable scribe was one of the few instances
where being marked didn't mean an 'instant death-sentence' outside of
the less-populated portions of the various green areas.”

The pouches – of
a slick dark green fabric with snap fasteners and a plasticized
thicker fabric draw-tab with a plastic grommet for hanging – opened
readily, and each darkly-printed page showed clear block letters,
these close-spaced. They were 'embedded' in that glossy-seeming
witch-paper, or so I thought until I actually touched one and knew
this process was closer to 'a really flexible species of granulated
waxy plastic that was applied with a heated roller to one side at a
time'.

“That and the
printing itself,” said the soft voice. “That equipment was
secretly imported by the Mistress of the North for her
documentation, and she had several scribes on retainer, including two
marked people.”

“Her?”
shrieked Sarah. “She sacrificed every marked person...”

“Save when it
suited her purposes to do otherwise, such as for preparing her
documents,” said the soft voice, “and she was grateful for
both them and the other scribes she had had on retainer, so much so
that she protected those people to a substantial degree and
'permitted' their escape out of the country when she was done with
them.”

“That..?” I
gasped, as I went over the information. “This is written well
enough that I can follow it easily.”

“That quality
then was sufficiently rare and sufficiently needed by a great
many witches that they put aside most of their ideological
nonsense regarding such people and those like them,” said the soft
voice. “That did not materially reduce the danger to those marked,
however, as those not in need of such services – the
majority of the witches and most non-witches that lived and
worked in 'the hot zone' – were still all-too-ready to hurt and
kill them for sport and potential profit.”

“Hence they
needed to hide themselves carefully and move about a lot to
avoid discovery,” I said. “Now here...” Pause. “Row
twelve, boxes sixty-three through sixty-eight – those are said to
have electric blasting caps. We need some of those.”

“Where is
row twelve?” asked Karl, as he went off to 'begin looking'. Sepp
went with him, then but a minute later, “over there, Karl. Watch
that lantern so it does not get too close to those things. Now look
at the boxes... That one. There.” A pause, then, “how many
boxes?”

“Bring one here,
and we can find out if the witches went through it,” I muttered. I
knew these were not the only caps, even if they were the
easiest for us to get to right now. “Row twenty-three, boxes
ninety through ninety-five, those have communications wire – though
I wonder what we will do with that little wire.”

“How much is
this?” asked Katje.

“One hundred...”

“No, it's not,”
said Sarah, as she pointed to the entry with one of her knitting
needles. “See, there. Three zeros, not two. Now what is a
meter?”

“A unit of
length,” I said. “It was a bit more than a yard where I
came from. Here, I have no idea.”

“It is, and the
conversion factor is close enough to what you recall to use what you
learned growing up,” said the soft voice. “Only one trouble, but
not here.”

“What?” I
asked.

“An 'inch' here
– the 'standard' inch, the one that will be on any precision
tools you find of 'inch' measure – is about four and a half percent
longer than that unit is where you came from. Other units vary
similarly.”

“Uh, speed of
sound?” I asked.

“About ten
percent higher, due to the significantly lower air density and
different gaseous composition,” said the soft voice. “The real
kicker is gravitational acceleration, which is about ten to eighteen
percent less, depending on where you are on the
planet's surface.” A pause, then, “it's more variable now,
due to the 'time'.”

“What?” I
asked.

“It's one of the
few benefits of growing up on a highgravity
planet,” said the soft voice. “You'll be quite surprised
when you learn why the gravity is so much higher where
you came from compared to here, even when this planet's size and mass
are actually greater – and no, it isn't the planetary
composition, but another matter entirely.”

Karl brought a
dark and sizable brass-hinged box to the bench, this nicely
'varnished' and of dovetailed wooden construction, and showed me its
'label'. This was printed on white 'paper' and obviously applied
prior to the application of the 'varnish', and again, was
astonishingly clear and explicit regarding the contents.

There
was also the 'stereotypical' warning indicating just what was
inside the box and how dangerous they were to handle, this in red
letters printed on a green background with a deep purple
surround. Seeing that told me who made them – even
if I wondered as to the meaning of the color purple – and seeing an
'intact' wax 'seal' on the blackened brass latch told me that if the
box had seen theft, its thieves were clever indeed.

“That one, no,”
said the soft voice. “It has a hundred caps, each one in its cloth
swaddling.”

“We'll need
twenty at the least, then,” I said. “This place doesn't have
fuse caps, does it?”

“It once had a
great many, though those caps were in witch-territory,” said the
soft voice. “Some more are due up here tomorrow, and they're all
stiff ones from Badwater.”

“Then we have no
need of those accursed things that would only explode when chanted at
with the right curses,” said Sarah emphatically.

“That...” I
then looked at Sarah. “That's how that wretch did it! He
chanted the cap-curses at them, only he changed two runes in that
entire long rune-string and added a four-rune ending meaning
'only go after my enemies, and leave those I choose be'.”

“That's more or
less what he did,” said the soft voice, “and a cap thusly cursed
made a very simple yet diabolicallyeffectual
trapping device with a fair to decent 'reach', depending on how many
caps the witch in question used and how he used them.” A
pause, then, “some of those here involved runs of 'det-cord', which
extended their effective reach to no small degree; and then to catch
some marked people, he used carefully-concealed trip-wires made of a
type of clear 'fishing line'.”

“None of that
left in here,” I muttered, as I began scanning the thickest sheaf
of papers. “Oh, good. This gives us a more or less exact map, as
here – I pointed with my finger at the first of the three map-pages
– it shows the layout of the place, and numbers and letters off the
rows and columns.”

“True, that
clear line spoken of was also in witch-territory,” said the soft
voice. “There's a better material overseas, and you'll most
likely find it early on.”

“Better?”
asked Sarah, who was looking at the first sheaf of papers. “They
have spools of trip-wire here, and it states it as being 'very thin
and springy' – I think.”

“Why is it you
speak so?” asked Katje.

“Because they
use a figure that I have no idea of as to its' meaning,” said Sarah
tonelessly, “and I doubt a Gustaaf would be much help, as I've seen
this figure used before and looked it up in one of those word-books,
and that thing said nothing beyond 'it was used before the war'.”
A pause, then, “that book did not indicate what it meant in the
slightest.”

“What is it?”
asked Sepp.

“It uses a zero,
a dot, then a one, followed by two conjoined lower-case 'M's,” said
Sarah, “and I've seen that figure before on tapestries, and not one
person I asked knew a single thing about what that figure meant.”

“Millimeters,”
I said quietly. “That wire's about quarter of a line thick, only
it's like, uh, 'clavier-wire' for strength.”

“Yes, if it is
not rusted,” said Sarah – who then screeched, “clavier-wire?”

“Not 'common'
clavier wire,” I said. “This stuff is closer in strength to
one-line clavier wire of the kind you are thinking of, it's so
strong – and no, it's not rusty. They put this odd coating
on it that makes it really hard to see unless it's lit up
especially good with a bright light, so much so that if
the witches had used this stuff instead of what they had
actually used, they'd have scattered me more than once with
their stinking traps.”

A question then:
“why didn't they use it?”

“Firstly, they
had their wire, which was cursed, and that meant it was
automatically 'better' – and then, that one witch didn't tell them
about that wire down here, so they never used it,” said the soft
voice. “It's just as good, as this wire isn't susceptible
to cursing, so it would show up more than theirs did while their
curses held.”

“Uh, unless
someone who was m-marked...”

“They didn't
learn that until it was far too late to go hunting for this
wire,” said the soft voice. “Cursed wire shows up a lot
more then, so you are right in regard to someone like
yourself.” A pause, then, “and the witches learned the hard way
about this wire on the battlefield, also.”

“Why?” asked
Sarah. “Did they fall for traps using it?”

“All the
time,” said the soft voice, “and I do mean all the time.”
A pause, then, “it never really got much better for them, either,
as that wire is truly hard to see in anything less than
genuinely bright lighting, and only what you find across the
sea is likely to be much of an improvement in conditions where
there's ample light. If it's dark, though...”

“It is that way
most places over there,” said Karl.

“Then that
wire will work very well for catching blue-suited thugs,”
said the soft voice. “They'll never see it, even if
they manage to get their hands on devices that can see the
other stuff.”